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June 24, 2011

Will the Real Stephen Elop, Please Stand Up?

Will the Real Stephen Elop, Please Stand Up? What is going on with the Elop-meister? Nokia's new CEO is sounding less and less like a deranged psycopath these days, and more and more like a confused schizophrenic. Is that a sign he is more or less incompetent nowadays, to be a CEO of a Global Fortune 100 sized company, you be the judge. But consider the following:

ACT 1 - THE COMEDY

NOKIA IS YEARS BEHIND APPLE, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"We find ourselves years behind (Apple)."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 14"We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees. This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio."

SYMBIAN IS BURNING PLATFORM, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 11:"We are standing on a burning platform. Symbian has proven to be non-competitive" and "Transition period from Symbian to Windows Phone will take 2 years (to end of 2012)"

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 20:"Nokia will continue supporting Symbian till 2016."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 15:"Our largest markets are China, India, Russia, as well as Western Europe."

NOKIA FOCUS IS USA, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on June 1:"We believe we can be successful in the US market. Our very first Windows Phone products are being designed and put together here, in California, with the US market very much in mind"

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 15:"Obviously we have work to do in North America, but there’s a much larger world out there. 80 per cent of the world’s population live within cellphone reception."

SYMBIAN HAS NO FUTURE, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"Symbian is creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 20:"The next generation Symbian Anna will bring a new user interface, new icons, and all the other performance promised earlier."

MEEGO IS USELESS, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones (but it is not capable of that)."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 20:"(N9 running MeeGo) brings innovations to the marketplace such as the industrial design, user interface, and elements that will be seen in future Nokia's products."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 2:"Nokia's mass-market phones, 80 percent of its total units sold, are not a good strategic fit for Microsoft"

NOKIA IS LOSING ECOSYSTEMS WAR, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"The battle has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 2"Nokia will contribute to the whole Microsoft ecosystem by offering mapping, navigation, location-based services, operator billing, languages, customization, hardware capabilities, and more. Nokia is also the most operator-friendly mobile operator system." (He also pointed out at this time or later, that Nokia is the global leader currently using Symbian/Ovi on several of those ecosystem elements).

NOKIA CAN ONLY MANAGE ONE MEEGO HANDSET THIS YEAR, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"At this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 20"Today, a new season is beginning at Nokia." At the time, Nokia shows its 'next generation' handset N9 running MeeGo as a flagship which is to ship by September 2011 and shows specifications of next MeeGo handset, the N950 to ship later in 2011. Nokia even had a third MeeGo device ready to roll (N9-00 'Dali' ready for launch in January, some say it was ready even in September when Elop first delayed it).

MICROSOFT IS ANSWER TO MASS MARKET, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on June 1:"Nokia has a long history of serving customers at all price points. Thats something we have to be willing to continue to do, using Windows Phone as the smartphone platform to do so." (On next day, June 2 same Stephen Elop admits Microsoft not good fit for 80% of Nokia's phones.)

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 21"Nokia is putting in place the pieces to capture the next one billion users who connect to the internet, many of whom will be in the SouthEast Asian Region." (Related: Nokia press release at same event: Nokia the company "Announces continued support for Qt as part of ‘next billion’ strategy.")

NOKIA PROBLEM IS FALLING BEHIND IN INNOVATION, OR..

A Stephen Elop Nokia CEO on February 9:"If we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead."

Another Stephen Elop coincidentially also Nokia CEO on June 2:"Mismanagement - not a lack of innovation - is what ails this company."

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH OUR STEPHEN ELOP?

Who are you, and where have you hidden the real Stephen Elop? The new statements sound reasonable, as if said by a real CEO of a major handset maker! Thats not our Stephen Elop!

Where have you kidnapped our Stephen and what do you want as ransom so we can have him back? (or rather, how much do we need to pay you to keep him?)

ACT 2 - THE CRUELTY

So. Stephen Elop has totally changed his tune? For months he spawned the most ludicrous gobbledygook that any CEO has been witnessed in making. He continued that babble happily on untill about the beginning of June. Now he has utterly changed his tune.

Nokia IS an innovator? (hey, I said that in February!)Nokia's problem is not lack of innovation, it is execution? (hey, I said that!)Nokia's main markets are indeed China and India, not the UAE.. (I said that)Nokia would be foolish to focus its new phones on the US market at the expense of Nokia's massive global reach (wait, I said that)Apple is not leading Nokia, its the other way around, Nokia leads and Apple follows - in fact pays royalties to Nokia (I said that)Symbian is competitive (now way! I said that)MeeGo is hot (I said that)Nokia can do many MeeGo devices if the CEO bothers to not torpedo all the projects and force all MeeGo top execs to resign in protest (I cant believe him - I said that)

Nokia's existing ecosystem with Symbian/Ovi/MeeGo/Qt was the strongest - ok, some argue second strongest - and now Nokia is gifting most of its advantage to Microsoft which is weakest (I said that)Microsoft is not viable for most of Nokia phones (and yes, I said that)

What has happened? If the CEO changes his mind on one or two points, thats perhaps 'normal' but all these? So many of these were vital, essential elements in his 'Burning Platforms' memo and were used not just to change Nokia's strategy, but as the pretense to fire thousands of competent Symbian, MeeGo, etc staff. What is going on?

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

I'll tell you what. The CEO who answers to the name of Stephen Elop has been spanked. Utterly, totally, comprehensively. Some time around the start of the month of June, little naughty Stevie-boy has been put on a knee, and his pants have been taken down, and he has been given a thorough ass-whipping, belt and buckle and all. So hard, that his butt-cheeks still burn today weeks later.

He has TOTALLY changed his tune in a matter of days. That only happens if you get a total, no holds-barred, beaten until the skin bleeds, type of ass-whipping.

What the hell happened? What happened between then and now, that our darling little Microsoft Muppet has been given such a beating that he can't walk straight? That he can't - goshdarnit - talk straight. Look at him, the sorry Muppet. He is crying in the corner, he's changed every one of his phrases. All of it!

WHAT DID IT?

Its not the stock market. That started tanking February 11, when our mischevous Muppet decided to start his tomfoolery with the Nokia share price (dropped 52% since, if anyone's counting. When Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo the previous CEO, saw the Nokia share price crash 55% but over a 4 year period, he was fired. Elop has seen 52% dive in four months..)

Its not the Symbian reseller boycott. Yes yes yes, that is killing Nokia but the timing is wrong. That reseller boycott was discovered in May and has been widely reported already. That is what eliminated not just 3 Billion dollars of premium smartphone sales revenues (per quarter, forever abandoned by Nokia under Elop's can-we-call-it 'leadership'), but also wiped out half a billion dollars of pure profit, per quarter. Wiped out half a billion of profit. Few get to burn that much cash. Even Donald Duck cartoons with Uncle Scrooge didn't manage that degree of wanton destruction of value. Yeah, this guy is quite a clown, he deserves to be fired for that incompetence alone. Half a Billion dollars of profit per quarter is 5.5 million dollars of profit wasted every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included. But while this is 'cause' to fire a CEO, even this is not what he was spanked for in June.

ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A SMARTPHONE UNIVERSE FAR, FAR AWAY

But what is it that happened? You remember the story, the nice story that was sold to Nokia investors and owners, that the nice Microsoft Guy would help migrate Nokia away from the old and obsolete non-competitive and nasty Symbian to the wonderful Microsoft Windows Phone operating system, that would restore Nokia's profits and market share? That very nice fairy tale we were hearing in February that seemed so soothing? The fairy tale, with Prince Stephen the Elop as our hero.

Well, a witch, a real monster came along in May called Steve Ballmer, who is employed by the Evil Empire, also known as Microsoft. He didn't feel he had screwed Nokia and his whipping-boy Stephen Elop enough, in the rip-off contract by which Nokia signed to make Microsoft phones. No, Ballmer doesn't enjoy winning nearly as much as he enjoys crushing his victims. So he added the ultimate salt into the wound. Skype.

The carriers/mobile operators hate Skype more than anything else on the planet. There will never be carrier-supported (for example subsidised) smartphones that run Microsoft, even if those phones have Skype crippled - the carriers hate Skype and will not trust Microsoft (they have long memories, they remember Microsoft and Sendo, Microsoft and Ericsson, Microsoft and Nortel, Microsoft and Palm, Microsoft and Motorola, Microsoft and LG.. need I go on? There is a reason its called the Evil Empire)

When Microsoft bought Skype, that sealed the fate of any Microsoft-powered smartphones. Suddenly all Microsoft phones disappeared from stores, as reported already by independent surveys by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe. That is only the beginning. What did our cheerful little Microsoft Muppet do? This is what our starry-eyed little Muppet said on June 2:

"You will have heard of the acquisition of Skype (by Microsoft) ten days ago. Clearly that will be part of the Microsoft Phone ecosystem."

And to really make it clear of what he meant, the real Stephen Elop also said:

"The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft is a great way to bring all pieces (of the ecosystem) together."

WRONG MOVE, CHESTER

That is why Stephen Elop will not survive as CEO of Nokia. He has now heard from all the major carriers, that after statements like that, there will be no happy ending to the Microsoft-Nokia saga with Elop in charge. Even if the carriers/operators fell in love with Nokia-Microsoft-Skype phones, they will not support them, simply because of Elop's ridiculously arrogant and abrasive statements.

He who embraces my enemy - becomes my enemy. You want to quote Sun Tzu, Stephen Elop? You should have learned to study the terrain before you move. To understand your position, where you are at strength and where at weakness. And not to launch an attack against superior numbers. One Nokia will not ever survive, even with a Microsoft by its 'side' (See Sendo, Motorola, Nortel etc above) - if it faces 600 carriers/mobile operators of the world, united, against Nokia.

Stephen Elop did the cardinal sin, he actually said his Nokia phones would indeed have that poisonous 'ecosystem' run by Microsoft, that included Skype. This is why Stephen Elop cannot sit down anymore. This is why he was whipped, he was beaten, he has had the spanking of the century.

And look at the little boy and what a spanking will do to you. Stephen Elop has totally changed his tune in the past weeks. Now his whole Microsoft fantasy, the blissful fairy tale full of Windows and Microsofts, has come down tumbling like a house of cards. This can not ever end well. Mark my words. The operators/carriers have very long memories, they will never let him survive that level of arrogance.

MICROSOFT, YOUR PLATFORM IS ON FIRE

So, Steve Ballmer, kiss your Nokia plans goodbye. Look at your Microsoft Muppet, Stephen Elop is now backpedaling as fast as he can - Symbian was supposed to end in the summer of 2012 after 150 million handsets and you believed you'd be selling over 100 million Microsoft Windows Phone smartphones next year? Not gonna happen.

Now Symbian will live until 2016 at least. Elop is shifting ground as fast as he knows how to dance, he's now committing to several new Anna based phones already announced, and ten more over the next twelve months. He said earlier that Nokia can't do more than one MeeGo device, he's already committed to two.

And most of all, for any Microsoft delusions of a future - Nokia has now committed to one billion - thats billion with a B - new Qt devices. Qt is either Symbian, or MeeGo (or Ballm,er get this - Android) but categorically Qt is not Microsoft. So? Ballmer? How's it feeling now, that Nokia promises a launch of the first (possibly only) Microsoft WP phone in Q4 in only 6 European markets, which is estimated to sell 125,000 total units. But meanwhile Nokia branded smartphones explicitly NOT running Microsoft (ie Qt based) will be produced in excess of one billion units. Did we want to do a re-calculation of that market share? Suddenly Microsoft at 2% market share seems 'big' compared to how tiny it will be with the 'Nokia' phones?

Someone miscalculated perhaps? Steve Ballmer, you really, really don't focus do you? Google or Apple (or Intel) would never ever had made this colossal an error in a 'strategic' focus area.

ACT 3 - THE ARSONIST

ELOP KNOWS HE IS RIGHT, OR..

Now, we are gaining interesting insights into the man who made the biggest CEO blunder in tech history in releasing his Burning Platforms memo. A Stephen Elop the Nokia CEO said on June 1: "My fundamental belief is that people will succeed or fail in the context of the leadership they are being provided."

Yes. And in this difficult year 2011, when Nokia entered the year as big as its two nearest rivals combined, and with a resurgent Nokia Symbian S^3 powering Nokia's first hit phone since the N95, with the N8 selling 4 million units in Q4 alone, and propelling not just a huge January quarter in China, but an unprecedented jump in Nokia average sales prices, by a massive 15%. This resurgent Nokia smartphone success you took, Stephen Elop, and you burned with your memo.

And yes, after years of building the world's most open, most broad, most carrier-friendly ecosystem; and after difficult early stages, just as it had become the second-bestselling app store too, you killed all aspects of Symbian, Ovi, MeeGo and Qt, selling parts off, and firing staff willy-nilly. All based on a memo of 'burning platforms'. Now four months later you've studied the facts, and now you admit that Nokia's ecosystem is strong. So strong, that Microsoft wants it all to make its weak ecosystem competitive, as the 'third ecosystem'. Without Microsoft, Nokia was legitimately the first or at worst, the second ecosystem. After Microsoft meddles in, Nokia's assets still would create the 'third' ecosystem. Whose side are you on, Stephen Elop?

And when Nokia had its MeeGo handset ready for launch - we now see MeeGo is strong, and that Nokia's (Finland-based) handset designers are truly innovative and clever - you sunk that project days before it was to be launched. If you were the 'execution-oriented' CEO., and you just bothered to support MeeGo a little bit, you'd have 2 MeeGo devices already selling, and a third announced now in June. But you claimed MeeGo was dead.

In the burning platforms memo, the new CEO of Nokia claimed that the USA was now a leader and that Finland had fallen behind. That Nokia was years behind Apple and falling further behind. That Nokia's ecosystem was losing in the ecosystem battle. That Symbian was not salvageable and MeeGo was stillborn. You actively ignored Nokia's strongest ecosystem parts, Ovi and Qt without a single mention.

Now we hear, from your words, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, that you know it was not true. The USA is not the leader, Apple is not years ahead of Nokia, Apple agreed to pay you royalties for all the patents Nokia has accumulated. You admit now, that Nokia's platforms and innovations were not the problem, that Nokia's innovation is actually a true competitive advantage, and in fact it was 'execution' where Nokia had fallen behind, not in innovation or creativity or usability or understanding the consumer.

WILL THE REAL ARSONIST PLEASE STAND UP

So you circulated deliberately a memo to all Nokia staff, claiming Nokia was on fire, while it was not. That is what in US legal term is like 'yelling fire in a crowded theater'. You actually caused the damage that ensued. It was not Nokia that was headed to trouble in February. It was you, Stephen Elop, and only you, with your delusions and utterly false memo, who created unnecessary panic inside Nokia. You fired the wrong people, you destroyed the wrong platforms, you sold the wrong assets, and you set the whole of Nokia on fire.

Now you are desperately trying to put out the fires - no no no, Symbian is not on fire, it will happily live for five more years. No no no, MeeGo is fine. We'll do Qt phones for another billion to come. And Microsoft? They aren't even compatible with 80% of Nokia's phones!

WILLING TO SUSPEND FACTS

In the Business Week article, Stephen Elop quoted from sun Tzu's The Art of War: " 'first, you must believe in yourself.' That's a message we have embraced."

There is a fine line with confidence and delusion. When we examine those 11 statements that 'Delusional' Stephen Elop said earlier this year, and contrast them with the new-improved 'Schizophrenic' Stephen Elop of today - we see that he made at least 11 strategically significant but factually utterly false statements, about the company he is leading, and its critical facts. He has been leading his company with deliberate lies.

But Stephen Elop is a great marketing man. He makes a great presentation, he is a great sales guy. He is an excellent communicator. That makes a great con-artist. He can convince you, even when the truth is not there. Not just you and me, Stephen Elop managed to even convince himself of an alternate universe. That is delusion. The willful suspension of facts, and substituting an alternate imaginary world in the place of the facts.

Now in June, Stephen Elop has been spanked royally, and he has come back to reality. Unfortunately, now when we examine those 11 statements, if those are delivered in a four month period, that is the most confused CEO of all time, the sky is blue. No, the sky is red. No its blue again. This guy is a clown, he deserves to be in a circus. He should be on the Muppet show, probably as a supporing musician in the band without too many lines to say out loud. But Stephen Elop has lost all credibility as CEO of the biggest handset maker in the world.

He lost the confidence of his staff on June 9 when he circulated the idiotic error-laden Burning Platforms memo.

He lost the confidence of Nokia's developer community on February 11 when he announced the end of Nokia's migration path from Symbian to MeeGo and that he'd go Microsoft instead.

He lost the confidence of the Nokia investors when he told them he is no longer in control of the company to the degree that he can even offer guidance on profits for the year.

And he lost the confidence of the carriers/operators - and his resale channel - when he uttered those classic words "Clearly Skype will be part of the Microsoft Phone ecosystem."

I wrote in February only half in jest, that anyone foolish enough to author the Burning Platforms memo would have to be a delusional psycopath. Now we have heard from Mr Elop the author of the memo himself, that most of what he wrote in that memo was not factually true. Please remember - I said back in February that I agreed with the sentiment - Nokia WAS in trouble - but as we have now heard form Elop himself, it was not innovation or ecosystem of Symbian or MeeGo where the problems were. The problems at Nokia are at its execution (and marketing).

Did this past four months help Nokia execute better? You be the judge. Nokia quarterly results care coming in July. It will be nasty.

ACT 4 - THE AFTER PARTY

MY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS

I have to comment also personally. I am quite bitter about this obviously, so please try to see past that and the hostility in the blog posting, ok? I tried to write the above with some humor, I hope you can see at least the attempt. But lets come back to this blog. Remember that Burning Platforms memo. I went public, very loudly and clearly, on this blog, in early February claiming that I felt the memo was a hoax. A very well-written hoax. That while I agreed completely with the sentiments - Nokia was in trouble in early February and yes Nokia needed urgently to change (mostly marketing and execution, not change its OS obviously) - I felt that there were such glaring errors in the memo, that it could not have been released by Nokia's new CEO. If the new Nokia CEO released a memo with so many blatant obvious factual errors - he'd lose all credibility as the head of his company.

I was right. Stephen Elop did write that memo. It was taken with shock by the employees. And he lost all respect of his employees in February. Remember, the 'sentiment' of the memo was correct, Nokia did need to change. But because of the idiotic litany of errors, nobody inside Nokia could take this clown seriously.

Since February, we have seen Stephen Elop roll back almost all claims he made in the memo, and issue corrections that are diametrically opposed to what was in the original memo. That memo will go down in history as the most notorious memo ever written by a CEO, and the one that nearly destroyed Symbian and Nokia. He has since clearly retractred most of the issues that I felt were at error. So I was correct. That 'Burning Platforms' memo could not have been written by a competent CEO of the world's biggest phone maker. Obviously on this blog I was massively ridiculed for my 'error'. You may want to go read that blog posting, and consider, what insights were there, that if you trusted the old Tomister here on Communities Dominate blogs, you would have understood, and perhaps even fore-seen some of the moves soon to come from the ever more beleaguered CEO.

And his Microsoft selection. I wrote a clear posting here on this blog, explaining why it would be utterly foolish for Nokia to abandon Symbian and MeeGo (and Ovi and Qt) and switch to either Android or Windows. Now look at what Stephen Elop is telling us in June and compare to what I wrote on this blog. Symbian will live for another 5 years. Qt will provide a billion new handsets from Nokia. MeeGo at least two phones this year. I was right, Stephen Elop was utterly foolish in February and again, I was ridiculed on this blog. I can't say 'whose laughing now' as I am not laughing. For Nokia, I am this close to tears...

And then that February 11 announcement (selecting Microsoft). Unless you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably didn't know that I wrote my 'preview' of what to expect Stephen Elop would say in his big Barcelona keynote address. I said he might do one of two things. He might announce a new OS, which would be a catastrophic error (see above). But that I trusted he was a competent CEO, and that he would do the following. He'd commit to Symbian. He'd explain Qt. He'd show a cool new phone on MeeGo. He'd explain the enormous success of Ovi.. Stephen Elop did not do that in February. Now look at him in June, four months later. He is doing ALL OF THAT NOW.

What took him that long? Why did Nokia have to lose half of its value until silly-boy @Selop Stephen Elop would bother to learn. Why did Nokia have to lose more than half of its market-leading market share in only four months (literally, a world record, the single greatest loss in tech history of any brand, any technology, ever). Why did Nokia have to abandon 3 Billion dollars of quarterly revenues (12 Billion on annual level - and when I say 'abandoned' can you now trust me, this money is never coming back to Nokia, thanks to Elop) and half a billion dollars of profits (2 Billion annual level). This goof is the single most expensive CEO to destroy corporate value ever! Why is he allowed to stay in power?

But my point is, I told you in February, what a competent CEO of Nokia would say. Stephen Elop in February was incompetent and didn't say that. He was spanked in June, and now he has learned his lesson and he is reciting ALL of it, word-for-word, just like Uncle Tomi wrote on CDB. But why did Nokia have to be destroyed in the interim, thousands fired, careers destroyed, etc.

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Comments

N9 was presented because of contractual obligations to Intel (and it's not even true MeeGo, it's Meemo 6 with MeeGo UX). Then he leaked WP7 phone which is in N9 shell just to calm down buzz around N9. Then his interview in Helsingin Sanomat.

I know this is not financial blog, but after N9 announcment, Nokia's shares rose, and after WP7 phone leak, it continued to sunk.

And today we found out that Compal will produce first Nokia WP7 phone!

Yahoo! Finance posted "Ten brands that will disappear in 2012" article, and yes, Nokia (and SE) is on the list.

And you Tommi said carriers hate dual SIM phones. Well, Nokia just presented one three days ago.

"If you honestly want my opinion how to fix Nokia overall, read this from before the Burning Platforms debacle (its all about the marketing and execution); and if you want to see how to try to fix it now, here is my best advice for Nokia's Board of Directors. But fire the Microsoft Muppet now. He is doing nothing but damage to the Nokia corporation."

Actually Nokia screwed themselves with bad management for 5 years since the iPhone 1 in terms of why the company is where it is. Same issue with RIM. Both companies management dropped the ball and now are dealing with the consequences.

Saying that it is about "marketing and execution" is the main fault of management. "Execution" problems are a big issue when you can't develop a credible OS after 5 years and only now coming out with a MeeGo phone which is only superficially good - too little, too late.

Elop is a convenient scapegoat - 5 years of Nokia (and RIM) mismanagement did this - they couldn't keep up with the times.

While your sentiment is appreciated, all this talk about little boys being spanked on their bottoms is quite unprofessional - not something I would expect anybody interesting in projecting any sort of credible image would ever indulge in. I know this massive debacle must be hard on Finns, Nokia being what it is in Finland. But it is still unacceptable.

On topic: It's hard to argue that Mr. Elop hasn't exactly ridden on a wave of reinvigorating success so far, nor that it seems that his strategies, as communicated before the last change of heart, are misguided. But it is also very hard to argue that this is somehow all Mr. Elop's fault. Nokia has been losing their formerly formidable position for years, dying the death of a thousand little cuts, and we are many who believe stronger medicine was required than just a bit of "marketing" and "execution" fixing. Whether Mr. Elop's medicine is right ultimately remains to be seen, although I'll be the first to admit he's not off to a good start with all this.

But even so, the ultimate responsibility rests with the Nokian board. Those guys, led by the same Mr. Ollila whom you back as a homecoming queen savior of Nokia, have stood behind Elop in all this, happily seeing disaster after disaster unfold. If Mr. Elop is to blame then surely all of them are to be blamed even more. It is the board's ultimate responsibility to relieve an incompetent CEO of his authority, when all is said and done.

You was right about MeeGo being ready since last year. You was right about finnish design and american leadership (and Elop's delusions, so). You was right about how catastrophic would be to announce a new OS on february.

You said some of this even before 11 February

Now you say Elop falls. I bet you are right.

But I want to understand why the board let him do all those ridiculous things? Did they wanted to show those stockholders from the end of 2010 how right was the Symbian, Qt, MeeGo strategy letting Nokia be driven by Microsoft as many has claimed as the solution?

@Vikram - even with years of poor management before Elop turned up on the scene everything there was still to play for in smartphones as Nokia had a clear transition path ahead as Tomi has outlined numerous times. It had everything lined up such as Qt, Navteq, NFC, Ovi and MeeGo to transition users at the high end from Symbian to a newer platform which was under their control with their revenue stream. It was a sunk investment worth billions. The burning platform menu destroyed that and the market for Symbian phones overnight. It was a particularly destructive action that is solely the responsibility of Elop and the Nokia board.

However although I think Tomi's analysis is terrific I don't think he gives sufficient blame to the board for the WP7 decision. They are culpable as well.

I think with MeeGo Nokia could have a tablet platform and even a netbook platform along with a simplified mobile phone range that would be easier to produce. The N9 shows what they are capable of and it is an excellent product.

Ironically in western markets an N9 plus an N950 style device would cover a lot of bases if added to by a newer tech phone with HDMI out and Micro-SD card.

The N9 shows real innovation and is near perfect otherwise. I believe there is even the missing FM functionality that just requires software to activate. Tomi please let us know what you think of it.

Dear Tomi, thank you again for your insight and for collecting these pearls of... foolishnes by Steven TH Elop.

However, I continue to believe that little of what TH Elop did was due to incompetence. He simply misjudged the fact that his real plan could backfire as severely as it did, killing Nokia much faster than planned.

His memo, I still believe, was just tactics: he knew the platform was in trouble but not burning, but he needed others to believe it was burning to convince them that WP was a good idea.

I did not want to comment on Meego previously, because I had not seen it, but now that we can study the N9 in action, I believe it is fairly clear that the product was strong -contrary to what many believed- and this raises two questions:
1) why did Nokia need WP (the weakest phone OS around)?
2) why was the launch of the phone delayed?

The only plausible answer, the only that I believe makes sense, is the simplest one: the agenda being pursued was not Nokia's but Microsoft's.

The most ironic thing is that all the work that went into Meego thanks to many (now fired) engineers will benefit WP (Elop's own words). So MS is not contributing with anything, it is even leeching Nokia software capabilities (Meego), rather than the other way round as many believed.

So Nokia is now contributing to Microsoft with: Maps, Ovi, Software (Meego), ads, search, etc. etc.... how should this make any sense at all?

How this was allowed by Nokia's shareholders remains a mistery. I hope they are finally realizing what they allowed TH Elop to do, and that they will take action, but, unfortunately, I am afraid this farce will continue.

And it troubles me to think how many people were damaged because of the decisions taken in these few months (employees, engineers, developers, etc.).

Tomi, I hope you will keep up this blog. I know Nokia is only one company among many in your area of interest, but I think the Nokia business story is fascinating and I can not read enough about it. So please keep up with the Nokia updates. I live in the US and of course I see the excitement with iOS and Android here. High end phones are the new cigarette and the new sport car. They fill time and make you look cool when you are feeling unsure of yourself. But at some level they are also devices which are changing the way people live and interact. I do not believe the American hype about the importance of being first to occupy business "space". MySpace was first and they have lost to Facebook. Facebook may lose to someone else in the future. So much American hype has to do with stock promotion. I'm sure many of my fellow countrymen have made just as much money betting against Nokia on the way down as they have made betting on Nokia on the way up. Whenever I see pictures or reports of Elop he is hyping something, like a bastard version of Steve Jobs. But when Steve Jobs hypes something, it comes out the next day. When Elop hypes something it may never come out. Does he spend any time managing? It seems the same managers who were inept for the past five years are managing under Elop today. Anyway,

I hope Nokia can succeed with Maemo/MeeGo. I think the idea of an "open source" operating system has an inherent fan base among technical people and from a dedicated fan base lasting market presence can be established. I watch from a distance, but I suspect the N9 wasn't as ready on in February as it is now, and I suspect N9 is still not completely ready. Another thing about Apple, their stuff does work smoothly as advertised without glitches right from the point of introduction. They say the N900 was delayed to fix some things. Still it was incomplete and glitchy. The N9 should be held back until it is ready to work as smooth as butter right out of the box. Then let the public decide if they want to spend that much money to support an "open source" ecosystem based on European ideals. I would buy one, but I haven't even the money to pay for phone service, so I've turned off my old Nokia and communicate through GMail.

Nokia clearly became a poorly run business after its initial success in the 2000's. It's a fascinating case in business history. I wish the company all future success. I wish Elop would shut up with his presentations and get back to fixing the management structure of his company. I hope the N9 is a success!

Nokia needed to be cut and burned. Given that the state of MeeGo is, apparently, excellent switching the OSs was the wrong call.

However Nokia had 6200 people on Symbian. Spending five times on R&D what Apple does. So—OUTSIDE OF THE SWITCH—Elop is doing things right. Symbian is being outsourced. Useless R&D and useless people are being dumped.

That MeeGo UI? Written in nine months under Elop. What the hell was Nokia doing before that? So yeah, MeeGo looks great now. But the team needs a year to be rebuilt given their incredible collection of previous failures.

So yes, perhaps, WP7 is the wrong choice.

But Nokia gets: a) complete access to all of Bing stuff worldwide, and Bing is slightly behind or slightly ahead of Google on all the useful features, b) access to to MS's ecosystem and if Nokia drove the right bargin they can carry that to MeeGo after, say, a year, c) two to three billion dollars.

Nokia gives up: a) $15/handset, b) Ovi maps (although they get Bing maps as well), c) loss of Symbian marketshare which, let's be honest, doesn't matter that much in terms of profitability in the long term and no, marketshare doesn't matter, d) and a major decline in stock price which is ultimately pointless (Apple was at $15 in 2001).

Could Nokia have cut a broad-ranging service only agreement? (Ovi maps for Xbox, Bing, Office 365, Skydrive, etc…) Perhaps. Might have been better.

But understanding that the new MeeGo UI was written in nine months? Given all of the MeeGo teams complete failures in the past? One can easily understand his choice.

Wow, already 10 comments? And in Finland Kauppalehti's forum has already also picked up on this story. Thanks guys!

I'm tired, I gotta go take a break. I did write also the melancholy revised lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine" (a song which by the way, when I was young and that song was a hit, I used to think it was the most silly utopian rubbish ever written haha) with the theme 'Imagine there were no burning platforms.. its easy if you try haha..'

I'll be back a bit later tonight to start the comments here, but please keep the discussion going. I find great support from you readers that you find enough value in my writing that you bother to leave comments for us here. Thank you, really. I will be back to comment to each of you individually.

We don't know if the UI was written in Nine months under Elop's leadership.

What I saw was Marko showing the N9 just like Steve Jobs shows some new product that changes everything. He showed the MeeGo powered N9 very differently then the "experiment for further disruptions" as Elop said about MeeGo 4 months ago.

Marko presented N9 as the new bet of Nokia while Elop said it was almost nothing.

Now if Elop had took the leadership of N9 project then why wouldn't himself showed it? And why would he say nothing about MeeGo's future? Self sabotaging?

For me it is pretty clear that Marko was one of the leaders of MeeGo project which Elop was trying to abort but couldn't.

And to me is clear how Nokia is divided on two visions: Open-sourced autonomy of MeeGo versus Slavery to Microsoft.

And now the MeeGo vision group just showed their full-hand while Elop has nothing yet.

Elop felt a need to have immediate impact on Nokia, territorial pissing so to speak, to prove he was in charge and in control. He accomplished this through partnering with MS, made him equal to his ex boss who telling how smart he is for doing so, it impressed his board without he billion of $'s it meant, and admiration from the press for his strength and decisiveness of leadership.

His other choice was taking the slower, less flashy, and harder route of recreating a system that executes assists effectively. But that does not get your name in the press, nor the self congratulatory meetings with the Ex boss, nor the instant recognition from the board. Not to mentioned being a salesman by nature they are not process oriented, they do not care about the storm just if the ship made it to shore. They focus on outcome not process.

As a previous manager, he has been a care taker of a successful product, a caretaker if a process at best. Looking at the problem of Nokia, it overwhelmed him. He want a great idea that would solve it. An idea that was so good, process would take care of itself. Enter Ballmer and him saying going with WP7 is a no brainer, with the dollars of MS support he could assure Elop success. All it would take is a couple of years of transition and they both be golden.

And even though it may not have been the right idea to give up on what they had and go with WP7 it still could have been successful. But only one problem Elop could not even develop a effective process to manage the transition. Which has left him with the stated "confused schizophrenic" behavior.

Another example of Eflop's "confused schizophrenic" behavior is the introduction of the N9, follow by showing the same phone with Wp7, effectively killing the buzz for the N9 (and the little positive press recently) and any would be excitement of the WP7 phone when it is released in 4 months.

Nokia and Intel have been focusing on different areas of Meego from the start.

Currently Intel has mainly been interested in running Meego on tablets and netbooks. They will be more interested in handsets when phones based on Intel's Moorestown (Atom) chips appear.

Nokia has been working on support for ARM based phones.

They both have been working on their own versions of UI components. "MeeGo UX Components" (QML) vs. "Meego Touch Framework" + qt-components

They both have their own app stores for Meego software, Meego AppUp for Intel and Ovi Store (or whatever it will be called) for Nokia.

So there certainly is fragmentation between these two Meegos, but as the APIs are mostly the same, porting applications between them is very easy.

Android apps can be run in Harmattan/Meego without modification/porting using Qt based third party software called "Alien Dalvik" by Myriad. http://www.myriadgroup.com/Device-Manufacturers/Android-solutions/Alien-Dalvik.aspx

While the android apps can be run in some way, I don't think they can be seamlessly integrated to the system.

May I suggest one possible reason for the apparent swings in the message delivered by Elop? Cultural impedance mismatch.

When I read the "burning platform" memorandum, I thought that the document was overwrought with hyperbole. The typical rubbish that a North American manager would put forth in order to galvanize his troops with a "salutary shock".

There is one problem though: So far, Nokia had been led by Finnish managers, whose style was never characterized by a surfeit of fiery figures of speech. When somebody like
Baldauf, Ala-Pietilä, or Alahuhta stated "we have a serious problem", then press, industry, customers would assess the situation exactly as spoken out: a serious problem.

And this is precisely what happened in February: everybody took Elop's rhetoric at face value -- Symbian is worthless, Nokia's ecosystem doomed, its legacy useless, its experiments in Meego and Maemo fruitless, its product portfolio at end of life, there is no alternative than WP7, etc.

From this viewpoint, Elop is now only adjusting to reality and keeping a more subdued, balanced expression when describing his corporate strategy. There is such a thing as a corporate culture, and Elop (who made his career in the USA) is realizing this -- but the damage has already been done.

I disagree that he is backtracking on the WP7 commitment though: the Symbian outsourcing agreement with Accenture has been just finalized; the WP7 phone was leaked at about the same time as the N9 was presented; and whatever happens with N9/N950, we are talking about sales figures of 5, max 6 digits overall -- a rather symbolic endeavour for Nokia.

Now the real question: what on earth were the members of the Boardm(presided by Ollila) thinking when they vetted the "burning platform" memo?

and at the end of the days nokia will offer devices which are able to be installed or flashed by any OS that end-user wants. Qt with its technology could realize this soon or later and the only thing that still left is the WPx so they need somehow to "learn" it (since it's a closed/proprietary source) properly by choosing it as a primary smartphone OS.

Just wait and see... The final intention is, nokia doesn't create a new ecosystem with microsoft, they just learn it for a while and at the end they'll participate in all existing ecosystem. The hardware technology will become a final decision point (again) and not the software or ecosystem.

Nokia is or was a market leader worldwide, they should have this mind years ago.

N950 (aka Dali) is already shipping to developers, so that they can develop on real hardware before N9 ships. The software is the same and there are only small differences in the internal hardware.

All the differences are listed in the following link:
http://www.developer.nokia.com/dp?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsw.nokia.com%2Fid%2F3744886f-69c1-4544-8ad3-72b352b4a832%2FNokia_N950_OneClickFlashers_Release_Notes

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Tomi Ahonen is a bestselling author whose twelve books on mobile have already been referenced in over 100 books by his peers. Rated the most influential expert in mobile by Forbes in December 2011, Tomi speaks regularly at conferences doing about 20 public speakerships annually. With over 250 public speaking engagements, Tomi been seen by a cumulative audience of over 100,000 people on all six inhabited continents. The former Nokia executive has run a consulting practise on digital convergence, interactive media, engagement marketing, high tech and next generation mobile. Tomi is currently based out of Hong Kong but supports Fortune 500 sized companies across the globe. His reference client list includes Axiata, Bank of America, BBC, BNP Paribas, China Mobile, Emap, Ericsson, Google, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC, IBM, Intel, LG, MTS, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Ogilvy, Orange, RIM, Sanomamedia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Three, Tigo, Vodafone, etc. To see his full bio and his books, visit www.tomiahonen.com Tomi Ahonen lectures at Oxford University's short courses on next generation mobile and digital convergence. Follow him on Twitter as @tomiahonen. Tomi also has a Facebook and Linked In page under his own name. He is available for consulting, speaking engagements and as expert witness, please write to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com

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